Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. It is important that I acknowledge the Government's intentions in introducing this legislation and the manner in which consensus was achieved on so many fundamental aspects of it over a period of a few years. I also pay tribute to people like Tony D'Costa of Pax Christi Ireland and others in the non-governmental sector who were involved not only in the issue of prohibiting cluster munitions and related ordnances, but also had continued a campaign that preceded and ran through the attempt to have a comprehensive ban on landmines.

I have a very genuine sense of both appreciation and admiration for the officials in the Department of Foreign Affairs who were involved in tasks of active diplomacy. My office, along with those of Deputy Timmins and Senator Norris, organised a meeting of parliamentarians in Buswells Hotel which coincided with the conference in Croke Park. It was useful to hear their views even though in the end I may have a reservation as to the completeness of what was achieved, a point to which I will return shortly. This active diplomacy is an exemplary action by a country like Ireland and was much appreciated internationally.

I will have the opportunity tomorrow to say that I regard Ireland's departure from our strong position on the Nuclear Suppliers Group a retrograde action. On this occasion we were in fact being very positive. When one considers Ireland's record in international law regarding the United Nations there is a high point with the non-nuclear proliferation treaty and Mr. Aiken's presence at the United Nations. There were also moments, as when with the new agenda group we sought to draw attention to the non-compliance of nuclear powers and also make the case against any proliferation that endangers the very survival of the population of the planet. In that sense, I welcome this legislation although not quite unreservedly. I have two points to make that are important in the interpretation of the Bill. The context is also very important.

The Bill stretches back to include landmines. I was a member of the Government when the landmines convention was prepared. It was very important at that stage that we produced a template of what we wanted from the conference that produced the convention. In the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2006 and 2007, I proposed resolutions suggesting that Ireland, as it were, should anticipate the conference that would eventually take place in Croke Park by laying down a template to which people could then respond. The Government and I differed on that. The advice to the Government seemed to be that one should let the conference take its course and then, on the basis of securing the maximum compliance, respond to the final conclusion. It is a matter for future historians to decide which was the right course. Be that as it may, my view is that the former model is the better one. In 2006 and 2007, Belgium and Austria had followed such a path in the preparation of domestic legislation.

This is a rather long way of stating a point of view that I hold, which is that one should always use one's domestic legislation, given the activist achievement Ireland can point to, to go beyond the minimum required in the convention. In that way, one is continually raising the bar. On Committee Stage, I intend to table an amendment on interoperability. The distinguished spokesperson for Fine Gael, for whom I have the greatest respect, and I differ. I believe it is an important moral lien on participants in conflicts for Ireland to take a strong line regarding section 7. It is insufficient to claim that as long as one did not know, then one could not be involved in any kind of criminal guilt or responsibility. There is need for an absolute ban on any form of participation with a non-signatory of the treaty on cluster munitions. I will return to another one later that worried me greatly in the course of the discussions at the conference and afterwards. I want to be as scrupulously fair to the Government as I can be. It has to some extent met the suggestion that one could define a residual category of acceptable cluster munitions on a scale of human impact. I will revert to this on Committee Stage.

Out of courtesy, I suggest that the Minister examine section 30 of the Defence Act 1954, whereby the Minister for Defence has the right to authorise the placing of mines. Will section 30 survive this legislation? From my first lay view of the Bill, it will not change the Act.

The degree of consensus in the House is incredible and welcome, but we should bear in mind the question of how many permanent members of the Security Council were represented at the Croke Park conference and with what consequences. The decision of the Nuclear Suppliers Group on the US-India nuclear agreement facilitated India and its neighbour, Pakistan, neither of which was involved in the conference.

According to an NGO that appeared at a 2007 meeting of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, some 200 types of cluster bomb have been developed by 33 countries whereas 28 countries produce them. Millions of cluster munitions have been used in the past 40 to 50 years and billions have been stockpiled by 76 governments. This is the scale of the problem, but people are excessively polite about, for example, the actions of the Israeli Government during the conflict in southern Lebanon, where our soldiers served. Some 4 million cluster bombs were released during the last 72 hours of the truce negotiations. People suggest that one must be on one side or the other to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict dispassionately, but the situation is an outrageous breach of humanitarian law.

Up to a point, international humanitarian law protects civilians during times of conflict. However, when the conflict is over, considerable areas have been rendered unusable. To the Minister's credit, he correctly referred to the destruction of pastoral lands and so forth that will not be usable for not one, but many generations. He also listed those who were killed after the cessation of conflicts in Kosovo and elsewhere.

When I was an election observer in Cambodia, I was in charge of the Kompong Chnang district at the top of the Tonle Sap River. One could not step out of a vehicle for fear of landmines. More importantly, I saw the tens of thousands of people who had been maimed and were still at risk. I admired people from New Zealand and elsewhere who were involved in the humanitarian task of removing mines, but I have no faith in the suggestion that those who place mines will ever tell the international community where they have been laid. There is no evidence of it in the reports of those involved in peacekeeping or conflict studies. The moral argument against landmines and so forth is not answered by suggestions that the issue can be dealt with scientifically or technologically through sharing information in future on where mines have been placed. While it would be a good idea and facilitate clearance, it will not work.

I have a problem with the definitional sections of the Bill. For example, they refer to fewer than ten elements. If one hits the target, the other nine lie unexploded. One is partially accepting the consequences of cluster munitions and their civilian impact. For this reason, I am in favour of an outright ban. I am also in favour of the question of prohibition, which would address the issue of interoperability, to which I will revert on Committee Stage.

An interesting question that may be worthy of reflection should be brought to Cabinet by the Minister. He stated that the production, transmission and carriage of cluster munitions will be prohibited. I agree with him in this respect. A unique element of the Ottawa convention, popularly known as the Diana convention, was the transfer of landmines. The Bill mentions transfer by way of ship or aircraft. This suggests that there has always been a provision to inspect an aircraft at Shannon Airport suspected of carrying landmines. In terms of cluster munitions, I presume that the same inspection rights of military aircraft will exist. I hope to be of assistance to the Government shortly in terms of such amendments as are appropriate to the Chicago convention regarding an inspection regime of leased civilian aircraft.

It is important to refer to additional points, one of which the Minister mentioned and that may be examined more closely on Committee Stage, namely, the impact on victims. At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs, Senator Norris and I tabled a motion stressing that victims be generously treated.

Returning to first principles, it is interesting that the total amount being spent by the United States, which is paralleled by China, the former Soviet Union and several other countries, on armaments is not decreasing. The figure for the US is approximately $600 billion, which stands in contrast against the aid budget or any minuscule amount being spent on countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. We must remember that the bombing of Laos was one of the great inhuman acts, totally illegal and without permission even of the country involved in the bombing. Laotians are still there, still suffering with their country destroyed in an intergenerational sense, so there are issues of intergenerational justice that arise. I have saluted the achievement of the Government in respect of this legislation. I salute also the achievement of those who have worked professionally to bring about consensus. I hope they can accept that I take a harder line in regard to what should be the diplomatic thrust in respect of, for example, text. I hold the view — drawn from the experience of the preparations for the Ottawa Convention in relation to landmines — that it is better to put the template in place and to try to bring people up to it. I would argue that I am supported in this by the absence of significant figures from the Croke Park conference. It is to their shame that they were not present at that conference.

In regard to the future shape of geopolitics and the new architecture that is opening up internationally, it is important that a lien be put on countries, including India and Pakistan, that suggests what can be achieved diplomatically rather than militarily. We are coming out of a terrible couple of decades during which — we must be realistic when discussing international affairs — the United Nations has been weakened by external events and by some of its own internal practices. Also, it is has been weakened contextually in terms of its inability, often hampered by weak resolutions that have come from a security council that is not free to act in accordance with even the humanitarian principles of the charter.

In addition, there has been very little to which to point by way of UN reform during the past decade. The result of this has been a shift from what was regarded as the great promise of the end of the Cold War that the resources of the world, financial, human, technological and scientific, might be released for the great tasks of reducing avoidable diseases such as malaria to enable people to move to a state of food sufficiency and the concept of sustainable development. This has been entirely reversed. There is a growing feeling, driven by the neo-con authors of the project for a new American century, that argued, in a distortion of an old classical theory of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian war, that not to exercise power was to lose power, a complete distortion of that Greek text into which I will not be drawn. This was a disastrous interpretation of the role of resources and power in the world.

An issue then arises as to whether we can recover the diplomatic moment in international affairs, and the atmosphere is not good. For example, it is perceived as soft diplomacy to be able to go tediously towards negotiation. It is clear that the conflicts that exist in the world at present are no longer primarily inter-State but intrastate with people seizing on the vestiges of religion, nationality or ethnic identity and putting the cloak of their current conflict on them to carry them forward. This is creating a disaster in Africa and in respect of India-Pakistan relations. In those circumstances, the role of diplomacy must be expressed forcibly. We should not adjust ourselves to that which is achievable by those who are half-hearted in terms of their international obligations.

In regard to Kosovo, one of the speakers on the fringes of the conference was 27 year old Branislav Kapetanovic, a man from the Serbian Army, who lost four of his limbs and suffered extensive damage to his hearing and sight while attempting to escape an attack on an airport. NATO dropped 240,000 cluster bombs on Kosovo. This raises the issue of whether there are circumstances in which clusters should be used. I do not believe they should ever be used. Also, on whether there are circumstances in which cluster bombs can fall with limited damage — a text which continues to hover around — the answer must be "No". On whether there are circumstances in which one can participate with a State or non-signatory to the convention and simply state that as long as one does not know what is in the package one can escape moral consequence, the answer must also be "No". This is not to weaken or take from what has been achieved, it is simply to give content to what I have been saying, namely, that the bar must be raised in respect of the assertion of diplomacy above war. I was convinced of this when approximately five or six weeks prior to the Iraq War in conversation with Tariq Aziz regarding whether the diplomatic alternatives to war been exhausted. Clearly, they had not.

There are few more damaging or degrading moments at the United nations than when a false file is put into the hands of a decent man and is read out as evidence in relation to weapons of mass destruction. On the basis of a tissue of lies and a crafting of deceit and dishonesty, people were driven to war resulting in the loss of many lives. How will we ever put a final figure on the loss of life in this regard? There are many in the shadows who say our economy relies on defence spending, defence spending being the test of power, and that therefore to have power one must always be seen to exercise it. This is the old argument that the Athenians lost against Sparta, a false argument on the basis that they did not exercise their power.

As an academic, I was often appalled by the intellectuals in different countries who were willing to provide a kind of knowledge system that supported the abuse of power. I pay tribute to all of those who have worked on the text so far. I remain convinced that it can be improved by including all that is part of the international consensus and by going a little further. The Bill will, I hope, fine tune that capacity that existed in the Ottowa convention to ensure nothing is transferred to our air space that will contravene the convention. I sometimes worry about those in the human rights community and international law community who study the Geneva conventions. I would argue that it is necessary for us to pay far more attention to international rights that arise in post-conflict situations. To my mind it places an impossible burden on oneself to suggest that the aim is to resolve conflicts in the sense of eliminating them. Very often, what one is left with is the creation of an amnesty in the memory of conflict as will enable people to negotiate together and to become involved in the construction of a new form of society. The world is full of these examples.

It is important that there is a new international recognition of the post-conflict casualties. The media of the world is irresponsible again and again in respect of the manner in which it constructs its forgetfulness. During the time of the famine in Somalia one could hardly move in Mogadishu for the number of cameras there. Nobody now looks at Somalia. Few people visit Cambodia where in the archives in the capital one can see paper rotting because nobody is there to look after it, where there are huge education problems because of an absence of teachers. Even fewer people visit Laos, and on it goes in many cases. The morality associated with the banning of cluster munitions and other anti-personnel devices requires that one goes further in taking up the consequences of actions that were taken at times when there was not such enlightened thinking.

Another issue dealt with in section 7 — I will return to it on Committee Stage — relates to measures necessary for people to address such matters as research, clearance and so forth. That is a very different issue from accepting, as any kind of principle, that stockpiles should not now be eliminated. I gave a figure on current stockpiles and it is important they are eliminated.

We must pay tribute to the different dimensions of the achievement of this convention. I have rightly given credit to the Government for this, as well as the professional diplomatic corps. The people I have particularly in mind are very important and do not lose faith in language and text when the issue is almost slipping away. If there is a history of the conflict in Northern Ireland, it is the manner in which the process was kept going by those who worked on text when those at the top had reached an impasse. It is perhaps the case with the Middle East conflict that if a secretariat had been provided to the Quartet process with regard to Israel and Palestine, it would have provided many opportunities for a principle of continuity after the United States had lost interest or come in or out of its relationship to the conflict. It is still worth the consideration.

We are at a very important time in our history in Europe and internationally. We are faced with the challenge of crafting an entirely new version of economy internationally which will take account of human need and be built on the principle of sustainability. It may encounter a further principle of inter-generational justice. This will require confronting the destructive misuse of resources, human and physical, financial and intellectual.

Beyond this convention — a real achievement I hope we will be able to fine tune and endorse — we must take it as an instrument, confront the non-signatories and drive on towards building a different way of relating to each other. In turn we will feed all this into the United Nations mechanism, which is the only international institution we have. It is pointless to criticise it and it is much more important to make it work.

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